BERLIN (AFP) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host the leaders of France and Poland today in a bid to revive the so-called Weimar Triangle, 15 years after the consultations were launched in a spirit of European unity.

Merkel will join presidents Jacques Chirac and Lech Kaczynski in Weimar, eastern Germany where the countries first came together in the wake of the fall of communism to pave the way to Polish EU membership.

Now, two years after that dream became a reality, the Weimar Triangle is again aiming to reach out to the east as it tackles differences within the bloc.

At its last meeting in May 2005 in the eastern French city of Nancy, the then leaders of Germany and Poland, Gerhard Schroeder and Aleksander Kwasniewski, lent their support to Chirac's bid to win public approval for the planned EU constitution.

But a year after the French referendum's spectacular defeat -- a result swiftly repeated in the Netherlands -- Poland has suspended its own vote indefinitely while Germany has already ratified the treaty without putting it to a popular test.

German government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said today's summit, less than two weeks ahead of a Group of Eight industrialized nations summit in Saint Petersburg, will cover EU relations with its neighbors to the east as well as military cooperation and the state of democracy in Belarus.

Wilhelm said the one-day meeting would likely also cover hot-button issues such as the Russian-German gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea "if the Polish president wishes to discuss it" as well as less controversial points such as student exchanges.

The 1,200-kilometer (740-mile) natural gas pipeline, to be built under an agreement between Russian energy giant Gazprom and German companies BASF and E.ON with their countries' backing, is due to come on stream in 2010.

Poland and its Baltic neighbors oppose the pipeline because it would bypass their territory and deprive them of transit fees. They also say it would pose an environmental and security threat.

Cooperation among the Weimar trio stalled in recent years, in part due to a rift over the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which Warsaw supported but Paris and Berlin fiercely opposed.

New tensions have arisen more recently between Germany and the ultra-conservative Kaczynski, the outspoken son of an anti-Nazi resistance fighter who harbors little affection for Poland's wartime foe.

In February, he said that the Weimar Triangle could still serve a purpose if its role were clearly defined.

"I myself am looking for an answer to the question of what role these three countries, which are among the three biggest in the EU, can play," he said. "I am ready to accept any formulation but I cannot act in the name of other countries in central Europe without a clear and precise mandate from those countries."

The deputy leader of the co-ruling Social Democrats in the German lower house of Parliament, Angelica Schwall-Dueren, noted that Polish conservatives had sparked concern with "aggressive rhetoric" when they rose to power at the end of 2005.

"But after their first visits to Paris and Berlin, their opinion seems to have changed," she told AFP.

"Poland is interested in cooperating with important EU members in terms of policy toward the east -- Ukraine, Belarus, Moldaviathe Polish cause, he also raised hackles with his pact with Russian President Vladimir Putin to build the gas pipeline and his decision when he left office to lead the supervisory board of the consortium building it.

But she noted that while Merkel may be less strident, "her position is exactly the same on the pipeline".

Polish opposition to the project "is a question of prestige, which is rooted in other traumas. That makes it all the more difficult than if it were really about energy interests". (Merkel)